Q & A: An interview with hit men’s boss

My interview with the hit men’s boss could be likened to the flick “Leon: The Professional”. The only difference with the hired gun movie was the hit men’s boss was not Italian killers’ God Father “Uncle” Tony (Danny Aiello)but a retired police officer somewhere in a town in Luzon while the hit men were not Leon (Jean Reno) and Mathilda (Natalie Portman) but policemen and civilians’ sicarios (gunmen). Brace yourself as you read the narration how people with shady characters were mercilessly killed so that other would-be-criminals would not emulate them. Here is the interview you seldom read on newspapers and magazines. Excerpts.VICTIM. Interviewer points to a victim of alleged killers who were motorcycle riding in tandem in San Carlos City, Pangasinan. Interviewer and fellow media man were in the former’s car a year ago when ahead of them a hit man caught up with a motorized tricycle driver and peppered him with lethal shots from a Colt .45 U.S made pistol. The 45 is the standard weapon uses by hired killers in the Philippines

MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA: How did you order the killing of a notorious criminal?

ANSWER: There was this notorious akyat bahay (burglar) in a village. He was fingered every time there was robbery that occured. Usually I learned his and other culprits’ shenanigans from my police precinct commander.

We would talk how to eliminate the habitual-delinquent. My commander would ask me my verdict: “Sir, engkuentro o sparrow?

Q: How did you eliminate him?

A: We resorted to “sparrow”. The hit man would be selected ala-round robin; I got two civilians and few policemen who are killers who have killed people in the past. I chose the one who did not kill somebody for a while. Some of them badgered me that they do the billing since they have an itch in doing it. Killing among the hard core is like an addiction their bodies crave.

Q: What happened to the burglar?

A: My men stabbed him one night. Killing by using a knife needs two to three killers. That’s why you can see a cadaver with multiple stab wounds on different parts of his body. Aside from it, it was a signature of our plot, we see to it that the target did not survive. There were cases in the past that a killer would plunge for several times a knife to the victim’s body but still the latter ran away and survived the attempt.

That’s why whenever they strike it’s like an ambush when they mercilessly stabbed simultaneously and in the flurry the victim to make sure he dies instantly.

Q: Why you resort to stabbing and not shooting?

A: Because stabbing is the politically correct, it can be suspected to be perpetrated by robbery, grudge, or whatever. Shooting could prejudice my tour record in my post.

Q: I heard from one of your men you ordered the killing of a notorious swindler. How was it done?

A: There this incident when a notorious swindler, an effeminate, in another province hid from those he duped there and resided and ran a restaurant in my area. A high police official who had an earful of complaints on the nefarious activities of this man asked me to silence him.

After some casing (police jargon for “back ground investigation”), my men, four of them composed by two civilians and two cops, implement the mission. I told them to stab the suspect.

Q: What happens to that swindler and restaurant owner you ordered killed?

A: When my men arrived they hesitated at first because there was a policeman from the other station having his dinner there. The black jacket he wore exposed his police patrol uniform inside. But my men would not back out. Two of them guarded the policeman while the two charged the swindler with their knives.

One stabbed him at his back but his knife ineffectively penetrated the right armpit. The target looked back surprised who thought somebody punched him at the back. But the other hit man followed suit and stabbed him at the back. The first hit man followed it up with a second stab. The guy hysterically ran by holding his back but fell down on the pavement some meters away. They thought they unleashed the fatal blows, my men scampered away in their two motorcycles.

Q: But what happened to the policeman who was eating?

A: When the guy was being stabbed he froze on his seat and did not pull out his service pistol. Probably he saw the two guys looking at him at his side. I was thankful for his non-macho attitude otherwise he would be a collateral damage on that mission.

Q: Did the guy you ordered killed die or survive because your men plunged the knives twice on him?

A: After they escaped from the crime scene they went directly to me in a bar somewhere where I sipped my coffee. They narrated to me what happened including the presence of the cop. We waited for a report from our patrollers who did not know about the scheme. After an hour we learned the victim was ran to a nearby hospital and was treated. I felt disappointed with my men because they did not kill the target. But in the following morning I received a report from my police man that the victim expired because one of the knives penetrated his lungs.

Q: You have been eliminating robber, swindler, burglar how about the others?

A: There was this hit man and drug pusher that pestered the community that feared him. Usually at dusk he, his wife and children rode their motorized tricycle from one town to another town where they lived. A motorcycle killers riding in tandem who were my men tailed him for several days. On the D-Day to consummate the assassination, the target sensed somebody followed him. He swerved the trike from the national highway to a village road. My men chased him and when they caught near him at the left side of the tricycle they shot him with several bullets that hit different parts of his body.

We waited for the police report that a corpse was found in that village but hours passed nobody called me. Later, somebody told me that the body of the target was found not on that barangay but on the boarder of another town.

Q: I heard you ordered the assassination of a notorious burglar and “hold-upper (robber)” in another village. Was it because, I heard from somebody, he barged in the house of an OFW (overseas contract worker) and carted his personal belongings and monies?

A: No, somebody reported that he wielded a gun and challenged my rookie patrollers. I resented it aside from his notoriety in his place where passersby like foreigners he robbed by poking a gun. There was a time we raided his house. Some thought we were there to frighten him but no we were there to pick him up and kill him. But he was liked an eel he dug a hole inside his bed that went through the (concrete) wall as his escape route.

Q: Did you corner him later?

A: Yes, two of my men went to his place one night to gamble. As they spent there for hours somebody called the suspect with his name.

My two men wanted to check if he was the target on the picture given them, stood up from their gambling table and called him his name. When he looked at them, one of them pumped his .45 handgun to him. When he fell to the ground prostrate another bullet was pumped on his body.

Q: Was it not dangerous for your men killing somebody in the middle of a gambling den?

A: They have calculated the risk. When they escaped they shot the ground for several times to scare the gamblers who scampered away.

Q: Why you have been talking all these dark secrets? Have you killed a person, too?

A: Well, first it’s deterrence to bad guys out there for them to think twice in perpetuating their nefarious activities. Second, I felt good in divulging this from chest as long as you kept my name in anonymity. I felt I have emptied a burden.

Q: Have you killed somebody?

A: Yes, when I was a young officer. I and my men arrested a notorious illegal pusher. My sergeant, who killed countless of malefactors, who thought I have still water behind my ears, mocked me not to use my .45 caliber hand gun but instead gave me a machete to hack to death the culprit.